Like this if you agree….or else

I have to get away from Facebook. There’s just no way around it anymore. Outside of a few good friends that share my addiction to working out and eating Paleo, there’s nothing good there for me. On any given day I may click over to my homepage a hundred times or more in the vain hope that someone somewhere did something remotely entertaining. It’s like crack and I’m not exaggerating. The worst part is that as much as I see how it’s sucking little bits of my soul away day by day I’m slowly becoming de-sensitized to the stupidity and mindless witless charm of it all. I better turn back before it’s too late and my mind becomes yet another casualty of puppy pictures and stupid dance videos of people none of us really want to see, but like a train wreck about to unfold we just can’t look away.

There have been a lot of studies recently that reveal Facebook and social media as a whole is actually making us lonelier. Online relationships just don’t compare to actual human contact and its beginning to tell on western cultures more than others. We are more connected than ever yet depression, feelings of isolation and suicides are only rising. Look around in your life and compare the number of your Facebook “friends” to the number of living breathing human beings you regularly interact with, in person, on a daily basis. If you’re like the growing majority the hundreds of people you claim on Facebook dwarf the twenty or less real world relationships you are regularly part of. Does this not seem odd to anyone else, or even a little bit sad?

On the flip side you cannot deny the reach and impact of Social Media giants like Facebook and Twitter. I rely on them for free advertising and to spread my message far and wide to a hungry audience. What would abandoning Facebook for a more real world centric existence do to my business? It’s a question I have to ask especially when I consider that I’m about to open a physical location soon. People in my industry rely on our business pages to keep people informed and up to date on the latest developments and goings on of our businesses. It’s a hell of a lot simpler than calling up a hundred people. Of course I guess I could always enlist the aid of a mass email system or mass text alert program, but that would require initiative, and Facebook requires none.

In the end I’ll probably swear off of Facebook for a few days, gloriously fighting off the urge to check status updates and likes, then congratulate myself on a mission accomplished after about four days or so. Then the mounting pile of email notifications will lure me in with their promise of public approval and acceptance and like the prodigal son I’ll return forgiven by my digital family. It’s a vicious cycle nourished by the fact that in Facebook no account is ever really deleted….